Archive of previous import rules (no longer applicable)

Regulation PR-2010-013 by the Editorial Council (December 2010)

Importation of articles

The importation of articles copied from other sources, in particular from other Internet encylopedias such as Wikipedia, is not allowed.

The only exceptions to this general rule are

articles written originally almost entirely by the Citizen who imports them and who, in addition, is also an active contributor, and

specific articles that are explicitly accepted by the Editorial Council.

Remark:
Of course, any available source—including Wikipedia—may be used in a professional manner to find information and inspiration.

Original imports page

The Citizendium is its own project, and we have a set of goals and an ethos which set us apart from our rivals. Among these is that Citizendium is striving to create the best, most reliable free encyclopedia on the internet.

However, Citizens are also pragmatic, and we realize that there are cases where it makes sense to use other open (free or public domain) resources to make Citizendium better. Biographical information, for example, will tend to be fairly similar in general reference works. This page is designed to give you some brief guidelines about whether you are really helping the Citizendium out by importing that article; and to give contributors a place to temporarily upload articles.

The Procedure:

Notice an article you think might be a good fit for Citizendium.

Upload the article as a subpage of this page, so that the URL reads CZ:Import/NEW IMPORT (or whatever). See example at CZ:Import/Gesenius. Make sure that you provide information about the source of the article and the license or terms under which we may use it.

Add a link to the article, and, at the first asterisk, explain briefly why you think it makes sense to import it. Sign it with ~~~~.

Wait a week for feedback from other contributors. In many cases, it will be preferable to actively solicit opinions (with email, on User talk: pages, etc.) than to wait passively for feedback. While you are waiting, it is always a good idea to do your own research. Does the article seem to be consistent with scholarly research on the subject? Are there recent developments the article ignores? And so on.

If you receive feedback, try to work with the other contributor to fix whatever problems the external article might have. If other contributors feel strongly that this article will be more trouble than it's worth, you should strongly consider not importing it.

If you have waited a week and received no feedback, you have a choice. If, having mulled it over for a week, you still feel that the external article will be a valuable addition to Citizendium, do it. (It's not as though Citizendium articles are carved in stone or anything.) However, if you're still not sure, it never hurts to wait, and articles can stay on the Import page indefinitely.

If an editor decides that a particular article is not up to Citizendium standards or if any contributor finds that the original work has been released under a license that is incompatible with the Creative Commons license that Citizendium uses, a comment should be made on this page and then the listing should be moved to the archive page after a short delay (so that everyone may have time to notice the comment about incompatibility). If an article is incorporated into Citizendium, the listing on this page should likewise be moved to the archive.

It's important to emphasize that this is an optional, voluntary method to allow contributors to solicit feedback on external articles. Contributors are free to import articles from Wikipedia so long as they follow our guidelines on the matter.

Other helpful resources

This is our actual policy on external articles. It's worth emphasizing that few articles from open sources are up to Citizendium standards. Also note that your external article may be deleted if you do not expand or substantially modify it.